Mrs Jean Mensa, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), on Wednesday expressed the Commission’s gratitude to Ghanaians for the massive participation in the just-ended 2020 Voter Registration Exercise.

“The spirit of patriotism demonstrated over the past six weeks has been phenomenal. We are most grateful to you. We would like to thank all our partners; the Security Agencies under the auspices of the Election Security Task Force, the Media and the Civil Society and Observer groups for this contribution which made the 2020 Voter Registration Exercise a success,” she said.

Speaking at the 9th edition of the ‘Let the Citizen Know’ series in Accra, Mrs Mensa commended the Commission’s Regional Directors, Directors, Deputy Directors, District Electoral Officers and support staff as well as temporary officials for their hard work and efforts to make the exercise a success.

“We have had 36 days of no rain in a rainy season and a smooth and seamless Voters Registration Exercise, it can only be by His grace. We are grateful to God,” Mrs Mensa said.

She gave an assurance that the Commission was determined to put in place the necessary measures to clean the register to rid it of all unqualified persons, including minors and foreign nationals.

“We are confident that at the end of the day we will present Ghanaians with a credible register that reflects Ghanaians and Ghanaians alone. A wholly-owned Ghanaian enterprise,” she said.

Mrs Mensa said the Commission was confronted with a myriad of obstacles before the commencement of the exercise especially the COVID-19 pandemic which threatened to throw its activities out of gear.

“First of all, it affected the global supply chain worldwide and caused the manufacturing industry which came to a grinding halt. This meant that the major manufacturing companies worldwide had shut down.

“The manufacturers of our devices - the Biometric Voter Registration Kits and Biometric Verification Devices also closed shop for a period creating a lot of uncertainty around the production and delivery of the kits.

“Additionally, as a nation, we were all confronted with fear and uncertainty around the Coronavirus not knowing what lay ahead. We also had the global and national lockdown which brought the world and our nation to a standstill,” she said.

Mrs Mensa said despite the circumstances and uncertainties the Commission kept its focus and remained unperturbed, cognisant of the fact that it would pass.

“Faced with the uncertainty around COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, we had no option then but to revise our calendar and move all our activities from April to July, three months behind our planned schedule.

“It meant that, for the first time in the history of the country, a new register was to be prepared at the end of the second quarter to the beginning of the third quarter, as opposed to the previous exercise which had been conducted in the first quarter of the year”.